@Marshall,
Thank you for all the hard work that you did developing workflows and making primer compounds available to us, reloaders
Finally it was a good time for me to start working on EPH 10 compound.
Attachment 198798
After making a mix I loaded one SP prime, placed it into an empty 9x19 brass, loaded that brass into my handgun and after a trigger press the pop was slightly weaker than from my standard Fiochi SP prime. To begin with, I was really happy to hear the pop , but rethinking my workflow I have now several questions.
1. Is the slightly weaker pop an expected behavior?
2. I noticed that some particles in the mix are larger than others. I tried to show it in the attached macro photograph that I took just now. I think this might lead to inconsistent mix ratios from prime to prime. How do you solve this problem? Do you grind the mix, grind separate components or do just nothing?
3. When producing Pb(H2PO2)2 I dried it under a regular tungsten lamp. I am afraid that drying temperatures might have risen to about 80 degrees Celsius (176 Fahrenheit) and degraded the component's quality, what resulted with a weaker pop. What do you think about higher drying temperatures?
4. Because I could not get pure PbO2, you told me that I can replace it with Ba(NO3)2. EPH 10 mix already contains 39% of Ba(NO3)2, so I dropped PbO2 from the mix and increased Ba(NO3)2 to 44%. Might this have a negative influence on the mix? Should I leave Ba(NO3)2 at 39% and just simply drop PbO2?
5. I did not have a pure alcohol solution at hand, so I used 40% alcohol drink vodka to moisten the prime. Might this have a negative impact?
I have not produced any more primes, just one and I obviously did not test them with my ammo reloads. Maybe everything would have worked fine. However before I begin reloading my ammunition in greater quantities your experienced insights would be really helpful.
Thank you one more time for your contribution.
valstietis